Press Releases

September 03 2013

3 New Terms Meeting Planners Need to Know

By David McMillin

Technology isn’t just changing the way the meetings industry works. It’s also changing the way planners, suppliers and attendees talk. Here are three terms that have become official words in the eyes of Oxford Dictionaries.

While inviting attendees to “Bring Your Own Device” is nothing new, Oxford’s inclusion of this abbreviation signals the continuing shift toward a business climate that embraces more computers, more tablets and more smartphones. Those rising numbers place even more pressure on meeting planners to understand how many devices their attendees are bringing to meetings. Why? Because more devices mean more bandwidth needs.

Here’s another abbreviation that’s impacting everyone. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out, and more people are struggling with it due to social media. However, for meeting planners, FOMO can be a very powerful marketing tool. By inviting attendees to post images on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the million other platforms, all their colleagues that didn’t register for the meeting will be echoing the same sentiment: “I wish I was there.”

This third term is a direct result of BYOD and FOMO. As more of your attendees become overwhelmed with email messages and social media updates, plenty of them are going to ask for a break from the glow of those screens and the vibration of those smartphones. Planners will want to identify opportunities to capitalize on this need for actual human interaction. For example, rather than just hosting a Tweet-Up, consider hosting a Power Your Screes Down happy hour that asks attendees to leave their phones in their rooms.